Do Ontario teachers deserve a better deal, or do they have one already?

If you get your news mostly
from outlets like the CBC or other mainstream liberal and left-leaning
media outlets, you could be excused for thinking that Ontario school teachers
are grossly underpaid and overworked to the point of exhaustion. It is almost impossible
to find any report critical about teachers. You may even believe that teachers
don’t want more than 22 kids in each class because that could make it hard for
them to provide the individualized attention they are known to shower on every
student. You may also end up hoping they get a boost in their
basic salaries not including the 2 percent increase they are
demanding.

It may come as news to consider
the less or never reported facts. Ontario teachers are the
second-highest paid in Canada and one of the best paid educators in the world,
according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development survey
of industrialized countries.

That fact and more was actually
echoed by a letter to the editor that appeared in a
left-leaning, Toronto-based media outlet.

The letter-writer was a teacher
at a private high school earning $25 an hour.

What he makes in a
year was meagre in comparison to the average TDSB teacher salary of
$93,000. The letter-writer pointed out that these teachers did not
work over the summer, during March Break or on public holidays. Besides, they
got several hours during the week for preparation time and one paid day off per
month.

He did the math and concluded
that if one was to average this out to an hourly rate, teachers made much more
than the average Bay Street attorney who put in up to 12 hours per day, five
days a week for the entire year.

The letter writer ended with
this: “For $93,000, I don’t think it is unreasonable to take on a bit more
work. I pray to have such a job.”

The average Ontarian earns
$55,000 and would love to trade places with even the lowest-paid teacher.

While most Ontarians working in
the real world, or should I say, the private sector cannot ever take their jobs
for granted, most have to achieve certain targets and keep up with the
competition. Even keeping a poorly paying job these days is not easy and the
gig economy means there is no guaranteed employment or income. This should
really make most Ontarians in the private sector get sick with worry, but it
turns out that Ontario teachers are falling sick more often than any other
class of workers, including those working in hospitals!

A 2017 study found that
teachers have been taking more and more sick days over the past five years. On
average, sick days have increased by over 30 percent. In 2020, another report
revealed even starker results with teachers taking 70 percent more sick days
than over a decade ago.

No teacher fears losing their
job for calling in sick or going on short-term disability due to on the job
stress. And let us not get into a discussion about their wonderful pension
plans. FYI, just 40 percent of Canadian workers have pension plans and that
percentage is shrinking rapidly.

Furthermore, it is a fact that
it is very difficult if not impossible to terminate the services of very bad
teachers. The only ones we hear about losing their teaching jobs are those
who’ve violated their students sexually. I’d be happy to know just how many
teachers have lost their jobs for poor teaching skills that resulted in their
students getting poor or failing grades.

Whenever students get poor
grades, seldom does it reflect on the teacher, at the most, the school will be
called bad, but no one would lose their jobs because test scores were bad.
There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that teachers set weak tests designed to
ensure that the weakest students can get passing grades. And if that is not the
case, they push the so-called ‘open book’ exam which in some countries like
India is called cheating. Students can simply copy and paste the answer or copy
the answer verbatim.

So, this is why I find it
perplexing that few parents are protesting this travesty and are not putting
pressure or voicing their outrage. The silence of most Ontarians on this issue
is deafening. The problem is that everyone seems to have a family member or
close friend who happens to be a government employee protected by powerful
unions. These people are either unable or unwilling to call out teachers on
this issue for obvious reasons.

Under normal circumstances,
lower paid Ontarians in the private sector should have strong union
representation while those high to well-paid government employees should be
made to work hard in order to keep their jobs and other entitlements.

Meanwhile government employees will continue to brandish strikes as their weapons of choice to ensure they get their way. And they will get it all as long as powerful unions have their media surrogates to count on and not to mention public apathy, silence and indifference. -CINEWS